Archive for May, 2010

“Don’t worry Marge. America’s healthcare system is second only to Japan, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain… well, all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky stars we don’t live in Paraguay.” – Homer Simpson

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

The humane but determined boys down at No Pun Intended have put up a fantastic Phil Hartman tribute that is chock full of video, with everything from Simpsons to Saturday Night Live to Newsradio. Many of these are famous, but some of them are quite obscure. Sadly, Hulu does not have one of my all time favorite Hartman as Clinton skits, Real Stories of the Arkansas Highway Patrol. COPS has become such a part of the culture that we now call men’s undershirts “wifebeaters”, but back then it was all new. Seeing Hartman as the abused husband, in a wifebeater, was really funny at the time. As with all old SNL skits, I’m not sure how well it has aged, but the transcript reads pretty well:

State Trooper Glenn McRae: Alright, ma’am, everything seems to check out fine. Would you be interested in going back to the patrol car, and performing a sex act on the governor?

Which brings me to Hartman’s episode of The Critic, “Eyes on the Prize”. Skip to the 6:40 mark to hear Hartman as Adolf Hitmaker, personal image consultant:

Hartman also did Jay’s agent, the raucously slimy Bernie Wasserman, it’s right at the beginning. Watch a littler further and Hartman shows up again as Jay’s old teacher Professor Blowhard:

“I think stealing cable is wrong. So I’m choosing not to watch it in the hope that others will follow my example. It’s the last you’ll hear from me on the matter. Thank you for your time.” – Lisa Simpson

We’re no strangers to traffic whoring here at the Dead Homer Society. (Will Pornography Monday return this summer? You get two guesses, but you’re only going to need one.) But even I have my limits, and this week there are some things I’m boycotting completely and not linking. The first is a World Cup video Nike made to showcase their stable of athletes; Homer’s in it for a split second and I couldn’t care less. The second is the numerous radio station “blogs” that put up a screen capture of Zombie Simpsons’ Lost related chalkboard item this week. I put blogs in quotes because many of these sites are identical (same text, same image, same layout), they’re just for different radio stations that are, no doubt, owned by the same conglomerate. Remember what Mad Jon said about the DJ 3000 being real? Well those carbon copy web pages are what the DJ 3000 looks like on the internet. Also, Entertainment Weekly put Homer on their cover, but their website is so poorly designed that I’m not even going to bother. Hmmm, maybe I’m still grumpy from seven straight weeks of new Zombie Simpsons? Nah. Of course, we’ve also got some excellent usage (much in relation to series finales), some poor usage, some art, and an escape from video game damnation.

Connecting with Games: The Simpsons Arcade Trip – Jean-Paul Sartre’s most famous work is a play about eternal torment. Some clever screenwriter needs to update it so that instead of “Hell is other people”, it’s “Hell is unfinished video games”. It’s good to see someone got over the hump on the original Simpsons game. Also, Homer does kind of have his face in Marge’s crotch on that cover image. Mmmm, vagina. (via)

BP’s slick responses – Look, I’m as pissed off at BP and company as anyone. Their negligence has caused the biggest, most damaging, and longest lasting environmental disaster in American history. That said, it’s no excuse for poor usage:

It is bad enough to have the top executives of the involved parties (BP, Halliburton, and Transocean) come before Federal authorities in a commission hearing and do their Bart Simpson-like “It wasn’t me” avoidance of responsibility routine.

“It wasn’t me”? Barney got is closer on Bart Chat when he said “I didn’t do nothing.” The real line is, of course, “I didn’t do it.”

Dove + Simpsons, Flintstones, Jetsons & Scooby Doo – This is not in English, and Google Translate did a more incoherent job than usual, but you don’t need to read it. It’s pictures of some shampoo ad featuring cartoon women, Marge, Jane, Wilma, and Velma.

Maybe it’s because of this quote from the immortal Poochie episode of The Simpsons: “The thing is, there’s not really anything wrong with the Itchy & Scratchy show, it’s as good as ever. But after so many years, the characters just can’t have the same impact they once had.”

The show grew a life of itself and just started taking from anything it could get… including itself. It started relying on just what South Park made of fun Family Guy for: pop culture references instead of jokes. Satire turned into spoof, turned into lampoon and the real base of the show, the core died with the lack of creativity that’s plastered onto some of our favorite characters week after week.

Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:

“In the coming weeks, you will notice some rather sweeping changes in our program. Please do not be alarmed. Itchy and Scratchy will still have a home here, but we will also learn about nutrition, self esteem, etiquette and all the lively arts.” – Sideshow Bob

We’re free – free! – from new Zombie Simpsons for at least four months. Woo-hoo! Of course, that also means we’ll need to find something new to chew on around here. Fortunately, there’s Season 9. Last summer we had one of our little on-line chats about most of the episodes from Season 8. We were trying to focus on those episodes when it was clear the show was slipping. Sadly, those problems became more and more frequent in Season 9. In order to keep our wits rusty and dull over the summer, we’re going to spend those sunny days slowly picking apart the good and the bad of Season 9.

Like last summer, we’ll be doing two episodes per week, going up in some combination of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Reading Digest will still have a home here on Fridays, but other than that you can expect more random stuff, including fan made items, crappy merchandise, and other Simpsons related material. Of course, we’ll also keep our ear to the ground for any news about the renewal of Zombie Simpsons for Season 23.

Obviously, Reading Digest and a couple of Crazy Noises isn’t much in terms of regularly scheduled posts. So I want to ask all of you other Simpsons fans out there if there’s anything else you’d like to see us do. We’re open to ideas, and I know we have a lot of funny and creative readers, so let us know.

Along those lines, if anyone has a guest post or rant they’d like to see on the front page, e-mail us. This can be a joke or an episode you particularly hated or loved, real life moments that reminded you of the show, really anything Simpsons related is fine. Feel free to include images, if you want to use video, it’s best if it’s YouTube since that’s easier for us to embed. We make no promises about publication, but all serious submissions will be generously reviewed with an eye towards filling a few holes in our programming lineup:

Thanks for reading, and hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot of you over the summer.

Useful Legal Tidbit

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